French Wine

A Fête for Elivette - Spring Mountain Vineyard to Celebrate at Historic Napa Valley Landmark

September 6, 2008, marks the official release of Spring Mountain Vineyard’s signature wine, 2004 Elivette. A commemorative celebration, Fête Elivette, will take place at the winery’s historic 1885 Villa Miravalle, a Napa Valley landmark. As a gesture to Elivette’s Bordeaux-inspired heritage, fête-goers will be transported to a classic French setting to enjoy a convivial bistro, gypsy jazz and other Gallic amusements. Elivette is a blend of classic red Bordeaux grape varieties that are gr...

Laura Zahtila Vineyards Napa Cab Three-Pack - $59.99

You’ve got dreams. Despite it all, you’ve got dreams. And they certainly never involved sitting in this cubicle, under these flourescent lights, in this soulless office park. But you can’t just drop everything and run off to Hollywood, or truck-driving school, or the jungles of Costa Rica. Nobody walks away from a sure thing to chase some crazy, beautiful scheme. Do they? Laura Zahtila did. After working for big high-tech firms like Cisco, she jumped out of her promising tech career in mid...

A Lunch at Claridges - Gordon Ramsay's Chef's Table

Received an invite for lunch in the city, so figured that it will take about 30 minutes to get there, 1.5 hours for lunch, 30 minutes to get back and we are done with it. Little did I know what was in store for me. I have been to Claridges before on many occasions but I was puzzled by a term on the invite. It said, "chef's table". Hmm, very curious indeed. So off I toddled over to the hotel and asked the concierge, where on earth is this thing called as a Chef's Table? He pointed me to the Gordo...

La Brancaia, Chianti, Italy: Current Releases

Tuscany will always hold a special place in my heart. If not for the dreamlike quality of the rolling Chianti hills in Spring, then for the fact that it was the place I realized I was probably going to marry the woman who is now my wife, and the place she fell in love with wine (she was already in love with me, thankfully) for the first time. The red wines of Tuscany can be as frustrating as they are fantastic. Just ask anyone who's had their share of lousy, watery Chianti at neighborhood Italia...

Thomas Keller and Hiro Sone: Umami is Good for the Soul

Thomas Keller and Hiro Sone On Monday, I attended a symposium on umami called “New Frontiers of Taste”; it was organized in honor of the 100th year anniversary of Japanese Dr. Kikunae Ikeda’s discovery of umami—which is popularly known as the fifth taste. (The others being salty, sweet, bitter and sour.) It was one of those hotel conferences that both inspired me and frustrated me. Five academics—including master of wine Tim Hanni, Gary Beauchamp, the director of the Monell Chemical Se...

Bailout of Napa wine shrine flawed; Copia was broke and had violated tax rules

A tiny state-owned bank last year approved a $77 million bailout of Copia, a Napa Valley wine and food museum, even though the nonprofit was insolvent and facing penalties for breaching federal tax rules. The atrium at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts offers sweeping views of the Napa Valley. The 80,000-square-foot center was built with a $20 million gift from the late Robert Mondavi and a $70 million bond offering facilitated by I-Bank. But despite its rich offerings and a...

2006 Baker Lane "Hurst Vineyard" Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast

Some people seem to get into the wine business through sheer determination. After years of saving, scraping, dreaming and planning, vineyard or winery ownership is the fulfillment of many people's long held (if not hard earned) fantasies. And then there are those people who somehow seem destined for it -- people whose stories you hear and you think, how on Earth did you manage not to do this earlier? If Stephen Singer was going to fall into one of these categories it would most certainly be the ...

The Eat + Drink List: This Week's Top 7

photography by Joe Budd 1. One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, corn On July 23, Elizabeth Falkner wakes taste buds from their slumber with a three-course tequila-and-corn dinner at Orson. For $65, you can sample your way through chilled corn soup, rib eye with corn-ricotta gnocchi and ham hock with corn hash, all paired with original tequila cocktails. Book your table for the party by calling 415-777-1508. 2. Swimmin’ with the fishes Learn about the annual 2,000-mile-long journey of the Y...

Happy Bastille Day Book Clubs -- Vive it Up with a Discount on French Wine!

Celebrate Bastille Day with your book club this week, or month -- grab some bottles of French wine (from now until 7/18, wine.com is offering 1 cent shipping on orders of more than $99 for their wines from France!) and...

It's a market. No, it's a restaurant. No...

The market/restaurant concept is starting to catch on in Boston. The idea -- a restaurant sharing space with a specialty market where one can buy the types of ingredients featured in the food -- has always appealed to me. I fell for it a few years ago in Paris (of course) at a little place called Les Papilles (below). I ate a wonderful lunch, then bought some wine and pate for an evening picnic, as well as some jam to bring home. The chef is a huge rugby fan -- he's from Toulouse, where love of ...